Paul: Paul is going first because he had a birthday last week (the 26th). He's now 1 year old. I'm very happy! He took his first 5 steps on Friday and was very excited about that. When he's not thinking about it, he can walk, when we sit in front of him saying, "Come here Paul!" he just flops forward. It's now a fun game. He loves the camera and is very happy to sit a pose for a picture, it's very funny. He would be a photographer's dream!

Family News: Um... work, play, frustration, joy, love, peace, and God's grace. That is this month rolled into some words. Let's see, we visited with Holly's parents a camper-site. It was a nice mini vacation not more than a couple hours away! It was very relaxing up there and beautiful. I loved it.

Our parish had it's parish picnic this month at the first Parish that was founded in Ohio. It was a beautiful Church out in the middle of nowhere. (there's a couple of pics to that). We also observed the majority of the contruction of our new house (more in house news).

Dan was getting better, as if leaving the terrible twos and then fell back into them again. Now is starting to pull out once again. It's a roller coaster ride. We have figured out a couple of things that we've read in books and also just figured out how to implement them:

Giving control to him is great and works wonders. Instead of saying, "Put that down now, we have to go." (and then subsequently dragging him away kicking and screaming.) I say, "two more tries with the [game/toy/object] and then we have to go." he says, "Way" and does what he needs and happily leaves with me. It's amazingly simple, works wonders and gosh, it works 100% of the time (so far).

Dan is at the age where he has an idea how something show go in his mind and if what happens doesn't happen the way he expects it to, all hell breaks loose.

For instance (a classic example and trivial), Dan wanted some milk. He came to me, "Moah" he says. I said, "Do you want some milk?", "Way" he says. I said, "Okay, I'll get it." I was doing dishes so to help me out, Holly was there and said she would get it for him. She pulled the milk out, started to poor and Daniel started stomping and crying, "Dad! Dad!" she said, "Do you want dad to do it?", "Way" he said sheepishly. So, I stopped what I was doing and poured the milk. Everything was fine.

If Holly had said, "Oh, I can do it, it's no problem" or whatever then Dan would have cried, threw his cup on the floor and cried and screamed for at least 5 minutes. So, we learn to decipher his mind and follow the steps as best as possible. Obviously we don't allow him to get his way when it's something he's not allowed to do, like pin his own diaper!